Rhymes With Shame
by une personne terrible
Summary: In which Johnny has an unfortunate... accident? and Edgar is thrown into the role of awkward caregiver.  doctor!Edgar, M/M pairing. You've been warned. Other genres: hurt/comfort, comedy, drama.
1. Chapter I: Ouch

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. I just like it.

Summary: Set after the end of the series. Johnny is injured when one of his killing sprees goes awry, and is found by a certain Edgar Vargas, who happens to still be alive (don't worry, I didn't really change canon much at all). Stereotypical Odd Couple-esque hi-jinks follow... but not quite. There is much drama, much silliness, and much M/M. Rated M for violence, sexual content, language, and all of those other great things. 

I.

People rarely got the best of Johnny, but when they did, it was a real downer.

Johnny stared up from the filthy alley floor, gingerly testing his limbs for mobility and feeling vastly discouraged by his present weakness. Everything had gone to shit when he'd decided to jump that group of teenagers whom he'd spotted skulking out of the mall, purposely smeared mascara creating bruiselike halos around the carefully crafted boredom emitting from their eyes.

Don't get me wrong, though—Johnny didn't like _anyone, _regardless of their genre of choice. His disdain was immediate and inflexible yet somehow poetic, lengthy diatribes running circles around his already addled head, targeting any and every flaw that could be found in the nearby populace and working him into a cold rage which simmered, humming beneath his skin until his hands shook with the effort to keep them still for long enough to think up a rudimentary plan of attack.

After his initial evaluation of the crowd, Johnny had selected this brooding passel, reasoning that he ought to give them a bit of firsthand experience to go along with their interest in the macabre.

Granted, this newfound knowledge would remain in their heads only momentarily before Johnny cut or drilled or burned it out of them, but he thought it might make for an interesting evening nonetheless.

The youths—there were six or seven of them—had shuffled from the front entrance like a small school of tuna, maneuvering in unison toward a rather squalid-looking vehicle, the tailpipe slouching, the muffler dragging across the macadam like a child's toy. Johnny followed stealthily, creeping behind and beneath the endless rows of cars. But something had gone wrong. He hadn't replaced the batteries in his taser in months, and so when he finally ambushed the group in the parking lot, he found himself to be wielding a dead weapon.

This was by no means the first time such a misfortune had blemished Johnny's career; usually he would adjust this mistake by either searching his person for a substitute weapon (Johnny himself was at a loss as to where all of the knives and hooks came from sometimes, and was convinced that at least some of them were created spontaneously, brought into existence by his sheer desire to possess them) or else capitalizing on his spiderlike physique, scuttling up drainpipes or folding his body into impossibly small spaces in order to temporarily escape, occasionally returning to finish the job with the proper equipment at hand.

Most of the time, however, Johnny would become distracted and either move on to a new target or else embark on a search for something sugary to consume–his attention span was not exactly pristine.

Suffice it to say that they were stronger than they looked.

Somehow they had maintained their slow progression toward the car even after they had realized they were being followed, and had used that time to formulate a response to their would-be attacker. Even if the police seemed to be oblivious of Johnny's incessant criminal activity, many individuals were taking it very seriously—Johnny had become the foe in every fight scenario that played idly through people's heads, and though most were likely not intelligent or capable enough to best him, this group was brimming with dumb luck and dumb muscle.

A few commanded brute strength, while others were wiry and quick, surprising Johnny by turning abruptly to face him just as he was preparing to make his futile attack. His taser clicked to life and then faded almost instantaneously, and before he could even contemplate the decision between fight and flight, the horde had overwhelmed him, pinning his limbs and systematically painting his pale greyish-yellow skin with more bruises than Johnny's house had restraining devices.

Eventually, Johnny found that he could no longer summon the mental energy to keep up his tally of the times he was addressed as a "fuckin' poser," and although he thrashed and snarled, with one last combat boot to the face he felt his mind divorce his body as it spun out of consciousness.

When Johnny finally came to, he realized that he was no longer in the mall parking lot, but in some greasy back-alley on a side of town he wasn't completely familiar with (he didn't particularly enjoy going out of his way to find victims—there were people everywhere, after all, and they had _all_done something wrong). The teenagers must have hauled him into the trunk and driven to a more remote location before resuming their attack, spiked bracelets pulled tight around knuckles, spit and curses and wild sounds like cats fighting. Eventually they grew bored and left him there, broken-boned and studded with wounds that spilled their angry red into the cracks and potholes of the alley.

After opening a swollen eye, Johnny deduced that it was at least nine o'clock—hours after the initial incident had taken place.

With a panicked start, it occurred to him that the wall hadn't been appeased in days. The sheath of fresh blood which normally covered it was doubtless flaking away like rust now, slowly weakening the already tenuous tether which held the monsters at bay.

Fuck.

Johnny realized that he couldn't go home, couldn't stay anywhere remotely close to where… whatever was going to happen happened.

Actually, Johnny reminded himself, he physically _couldn't _go home. After a few pained crawling motions toward the other end of the street, he had come to an unexpected halt, his neck straining backward—Johnny had been tied to a dumpster like an abandoned animal, one of the attackers' dog collar chokers locked around his neck making any further progression down the road impossible. Even if Johnny could work up the energy to untie the rope, he doubted he had a finger on either hand that remained unbroken. The brief yet unexpected tug of the collar coupled with the disastrous attempt at movement quickly sent him falling yet again into a black expanse that he nearly mistook for death.


	2. Chapter II: Reunion

II. 

Edgar Vargas had finally gotten off of work.

As he made his way down the curling backalleys, Edgar sighed, his thoughts blurred into dull repetition from a day of filing charts, entering data, and answering phones. Being a clerical worker at a mental hospital was no fun, really, but at least he could catch some interesting bits of conversation once in a while—regular hospitals were stockpiles of death and contagion; at least some of the patients at Edgar's hospital had something to say other than the grating complaints and sobbing of the terminally sane, even if it was mostly nonsense.

Besides, he needed the money if he was ever going to have a hope of paying off med school and becoming… whatever it was that he wanted to become.

He didn't quite want to be a doctor, since his empathetic nature put patients on a level more personal than he was comfortable with, and if he wanted to be truly honest with himself, Edgar didn't feel like he had much of a place anywhere.

He had a nagging suspicion that his part-time job at the hospital was going to last far longer than he had initially anticipated. He would settle down into the clockwork stresses and minimal rewards of employment, foolishly planning his escape from it all until the inevitable day when he would end up in one of the hospitals.

Privately, Edgar would place his bet on the asylum.

He knew what he was good at—he was fairly adept at the violin, though not well enough to make a career out of it, he was a formidable chess player, (albeit an out-of-practice one,) and he could write, but this talent usually manifested itself in the form of one of the more unprofitable genres such as flash-fiction or poetry. He would concede that he was intelligent, but that didn't make him an interesting person, he thought despondently, kicking at a bit of unearthed asphalt.

Edgar went on with his bitter musings for some time; he was at heart an optimist, but his current situation was doing its best to wipe that out.

As did his surroundings, for that matter. The spindly shadows of fire escapes criss-crossed the narrow byways, sparsely illuminated by the moth-coated streetlights which punctuated the main roads, and Edgar shivered as the October leaves that blew in from the suburbs rasped across his path. He turned down a particularly unfriendly-looking alley, daring himself to be a bit more… well, daring.

Suddenly, a blackened streetlight sputtered back to life, transforming the backstreet from its prior subterranean darkness to a more navigable muted grey.

It was soon after this additional light source presented itself that Edgar realized he was not alone in the alley. His anxiety-heightened senses allowed him to detect the thin, guttural sound of labored breathing, which, to Edgar's alarm, seemed to be coming from a dumpster, beside which a suspicious-looking puddle had formed. Despite his immediate desire to flee, Edgar crept forward, tentatively nearing the pile of angular black and red which occupied the space beside the puddle, expecting to find a car-stricken dog.

What he discovered when he reached out toward the shape nearly shocked him into recoiling altogether, and for a few moments his hand rested atop the other's crooked hand which trailed out, no longer human but some sort of failed experiment, a strange hybrid lying folded in on itself, part wounded bird, part something else entirely, a pigeon with ruined wings dragging in the dirt.

Edgar moved to bring the other man further into the dim light (he knew that moving someone in such a state of obvious medical distress was a horrible idea, but he was consumed with morbid curiosity,) and without warning a large grey eye opened halfway to greet him. "Wh…" the other man started, and instantly, Edgar knew what the rest of the sentence was intended to be:

"Why are humans so unpleasant?"


	3. Chapter III: Repair

III.

Without even thinking, Edgar quickly fumbled to untie the rope which bound Johnny to his spot in the corner, releasing him from the demeaning collar. Slowly lifting the predictably again-unconscious man, Edgar was startled by his almost nonexistent weight and the obvious broken bones which made his slack limbs hang at bizarre angles. Could his feeling of recognition be correct? Was this really the same man who had meant to kill him a year or so ago?

In his forced sleep, Johnny mumbled and grimaced, looking hopelessly incapable of causing harm.

Edgar thought back to the time he was held captive by the thin, rangy man who was currently bleeding out all over Edgar's white work shirt.

He had been walking to class when Johnny had ambushed him, snatching his laptop and striking his skull with it in one clean sweep. When he'd come to, Edgar had found himself trussed up in some absurd Rube Goldberg-esque apparatus, sharp objects pointed at literally every vital point. To his surprise, the ensuing conversation with his captor had been genuinely enlightening.

It may have just been the Stockholm syndrome talking, but Edgar found himself coming to a sort of intellectual understanding, a (possibly) mutual respect developing between himself and the absolute madman pacing the floor in front of him. As ridiculous as it was, they began arguing ethics, Edgar from his near-crucifixion in the strange basement and Johnny from wherever his frenetic movements took him, often anxiously looking up at him while sprawled out on the cold concrete floor.

Finally, the conversation had dwindled to the point where Edgar's unnecessarily gory death seemed unavoidable, and Johnny had turned away for a moment with a look of what might have been shame on his face before triggering the mechanism which activated the machine.

To Edgar's bewilderment, however, he awoke a while later to find himself very much alive yet light-headed from blood loss, his arms and throat crudely stitched and bandaged and his glasses lying broken at his feet. Thankfully, Johnny had been nowhere to be found, and the manacles binding Edgar to the machine had been released, and so he made a hasty escape.

For whatever reason, he had been spared, though he was not sure if this was fortunate or not, as he had no choice but to resume his largely colorless existence.

In fact, Edgar thought that with the help of life's everyday monotony he probably would have since forgotten about the whole thing if it weren't for the scars which still ran their pale Morse code of dots and dashes around his forearms and neck, itching occasionally. He had been siphoned off like a maple tree, and now he was carrying the perpetrator… back to his apartment?

Edgar interrupted his reminiscence to take note of his current location—only a few blocks away from his place of residence. He quickly reasoned that there was no way Johnny would be welcomed into the hospital—as lucky as the black-haired man was, Edgar doubted that he could go through the system unrecognized. And besides, he really was harmless like this.

That and Edgar had been harboring a fascination with Johnny that bordered on obsessive, constantly finding himself wondering where the other man was and what he was doing while he sat at his desk and offered careful consolation to the families of patients at the hospital before demanding as soothingly as possible that they sign a form.

Once Edgar arrived at home, carrying Johnny up several flights of stairs to his modest apartment in the top floor of an old Victorian house, (thankfully the backstreets he had taken to get there had been largely deserted—he wasn't sure how to respond to the looks and questions he would doubtless receive) he set to work employing his medical knowledge, placing Johnny on his kitchen table, which would have to do as an operating area.

It seemed likely that the black-haired man was suffering from a punctured lung and would likely need surgery, several hundred stitches, and more bandages and splints than Edgar had ever seen on a single person. Thankfully Edgar was approaching the end of his time at medical school, and was currently well-equipped to deal with such an emergency.

He mused with a slight smirk that, on a surface level, he was really not so much different from Johnny; both men collected knives, had seen far more blood than the average person would ever view in a lifetime, and were exhaustively busy. They were even similar in appearance, though Edgar wore glasses, his hair was brunette and slightly curled, and he was fairly certain that Johnny was a few inches taller than him.

Edgar began to carefully snip off the remaining scraps of tattered clothing which obstinately clung to Johnny's frame, wincing as he was given a better view of the terrible damage his body had undergone and feeling slightly awkward about this whole seeing-a-murderer-naked thing, even if it _was_ Johnny.

Some of the fabric had become affixed to Johnny's skin with coagulating blood, acting as a sort of glue, and as Edgar picked at a particularly stubborn bit, the pale man suddenly twitched, gasping and biting at his already torn lips, creating a new rivulet of blood which trailed down his chin and pooled in the vast hollow above his sternum.

Frightened, Edgar realized that although his above-average stock of medical supplies contained numerous antibacterial cleaners, surgical tools, and bandages, he lacked anesthetics (most of the actual equipment he owned had been purchased as curios, more or less—display pieces to show to the rare friend or acquaintance the tools of his trade, though such visits were really wishful thinking). He decided to go for the next best thing—vodka and some Tylenol.

"I'm sorry," he whispered as he coaxed a hardly-conscious Johnny into swallowing the mixture.

After Johnny had yet again fallen into an uncomfortable slumber, Edgar began to clean the numerous wounds, working from head to toe with diligent precision; though he was appalled by the extent of Johnny's injuries, he managed to patch him up to the best of his ability, taking the entire night and much of the morning to bring the other man to a point where Edgar thought it was _just_ possible that he might not die.

Even then, Edgar was not able to properly dress Johnny's wounds; his broken bones ought to be bound in casts, but instead they were securely wrapped with several layers of bandages. He had been forced to attempt an exhaustive amateur transfusion, and he desperately hoped that their blood types were compatible.

If Edgar weren't so worried and tired by the end of the whole thing, he would have found this amusing—once again, Johnny was using his blood.


	4. Chapter IV: Breakfast

IV. 

Edgar awoke in the late afternoon to find that Johnny was still sprawled out across his table, thankfully audibly breathing. Cursing his poor hospitality, ("_he took your blood_ _to_ paint his house," his thoughts rebuked incredulously) Edgar gently lifted Johnny and carried him to his bedroom, assuming correctly that the dark-haired man would be too tall to lie comfortably on the couch.

After he was certain that Johnny was in the best position to minimize unpleasant contact with his injuries, Edgar took a moment to really look at his patient. He thought of that old cliché claiming that most people look innocent in their sleep, but Johnny was without a doubt an exception to this rule, features set in a feral snarl as he battled his way through the nightmares that must have been routine for him.

It was, Edgar thought, pretty unnerving, though the sight of the other man in such obvious distress was saddening as well. He decided that, as traumatic as the dreams appeared to be, the best course of action would be to let the man sleep; he had lost a phenomenal amount of blood and shouldn't really be doing anything but lying down for a long time.

This prospect worried Edgar greatly; was he actually going to harbor this unmistakably disturbed individual for the length of time it would take for him to make a full recovery? Edgar sometimes found himself to be frightened by the patients at the institution, and none of them were even approaching Johnny's level. Anyways, he wasn't really sure if there was anything to be afraid of… Johnny was going to be largely incapacitated for at least a few weeks, what could he do?

"_You know exactly what he can do_," his mind insisted, "_so what if he can't now?_"

When Edgar returned to the room, he brought a late breakfast of French toast with him.

Johnny was still asleep, though he had lost the look of fear and anger that had come with whatever dream he'd been suffering through. Instead, he wore a slight frown, but otherwise looked almost… attractive.

If he was going to be honest, Edgar wasn't extremely surprised by this thought. He had always had a bit of a thing for tall, thin men, and it was an inarguable fact that Johnny was an interesting person, not to mention intelligent. And even though he was currently a patchwork of cloth and stitching, he still had that look of insecurity mingled with defiance that Edgar felt compelled to learn more about.

He would admit that it was a bit bizarre that Johnny's hair had grown far longer in two small patches, creating awkward tendrils which reached past his otherwise brow-length hair, but it didn't matter. He was wholly, impossibly, dangerously beautiful, even with the old scars running like lace across his skin and the birdlike bones which ran just beneath the surface, jutting out at the joints.

_Especially_ with the scars and bones, really. Looking at Johnny instantly piqued Edgar's interest in his history, doubtless an endless supply of stories both unpleasant and fascinating. "'_Almost' attractive, indeed_," Edgar thought, "_why don't you go ahead and make a sonnet out of that little observation sequence, Edgar? You're positively fawning over him_."

In short, Edgar felt like a total pervert. Here he was, not only allowing the man who had tried to kill him (an incident which, in retrospect, he found to be mysterious, sad, and a little awkwardly sexy) to stay in his house, but ogling him in his sleep. "_Should've done this hours ago when he was still properly passed out, could've felt him up,_" his thoughts snickered. Edgar immediately admonished this thought with "_Can you even 'feel up' a guy? That sounds like a tits-exclusive sort of term to me…_"

"Christ," he said out loud, and the brief yet vehement outburst was enough to startle Johnny from his sleep, awaking to see Edgar looking like, for lack of a better term, a total weirdo.

He was standing at the foot of the bed holding a tray full of breakfast food, bespectacled eyes locked to Johnny's and a patchy, obvious blush rising across his face. Normally, Johnny was the lightest sleeper on earth—he would jump awake at any sound, recognizable or unrecognizable. If someone had managed to make his way into his room, then something was clearly wrong here. He moved to get up, but he was held in place by strips of fabric which bound his wrists and ankles to the bed. "What happened last night? And why do I have a headache?" he choked out, his throat having been seriously injured during the (attack or defense?) …whatever it was.

"Nothing! I mean, really, I had to tie you down… it was for your own good," Edgar blurted out, and Johnny raised an eyebrow. "I mean, it's not like… well, you were jerking around in your sleep, I couldn't just let you tear out all of those stitches," he explained, and, feeling a bit bolder, added "that took a lot of work, you know."

"And the headache?" Johnny said slowly, as if he were reassessing Edgar's mental proficiency.

"I had to get you drunk."

At this, Johnny's eyebrow raised until it seemed about to break away from his face and start its own orbit.

"Oh my god… for anesthetic, you know. Didn't have any. That and you've probably been kicked in the face at least once," Edgar explained self-consciously. "Looks like you don't have very many friends," he attempted to joke, but Johnny's expression instantly shifted from annoyed to guardedly apathetic.

"For fuck's sake… what I'm trying to tell you is that it looks like you were attacked by multiple people—probably at least five—who had an obvious grudge and you didn't come out of it too good."

"Is that French toast?" the dark-haired man interrupted, doing his best to point toward the plates. "Yes!" Edgar exclaimed, a tad overzealously, grateful for the change in topic, and scampered toward the bed to give Johnny his portion of the meal, untying his limbs and setting his plate in front of him. Johnny, to Edgar's amazement, had somehow picked up the syrup container, slathered an outrageously unhealthy dosage of it across a slice of the French toast, and then created a sort of sandwich between two pieces, eating the whole thing in record time. That shouldn't have been possible—his hands were broken. Not quite as badly as the rest of his body, but they were fairly well damaged from being used as an attempt at defense, enough to make a few fingers look like stubbed out cigarettes before Edgar had straightened and set them.

"Edgar Vargas," Johnny stated, just as Edgar's thoughts began to get dangerously figurative, which usually led to some sort of inappropriate rhapsodizing. He came to a hasty solution ("_I guess he was really hungry_") before replying to the startling address.

"You… remember my name."

"Well, I let you go, didn't I?"

"So?"

"So I remember your name."

Edgar didn't have the faintest idea what he meant, but he was glad there was some kind of communication going on between them. "Well… how was your sleep? You looked really on-edge for a while there. I was…" ("_worried worried worried worried worried" _hummed his mind) "a little freaked out." ("_Oh_ _Edgar, you sound _so_ smart and articulate_. _Let's have wild, spontaneous sex._")

"Don't know. Nothing to compare it to. I don't really sleep." Johnny drawled, sounding distant and uncertain.

"Well, I have trouble myself. Work and school and everything…" Edgar said awkwardly, realizing mid-sentence that discussing employment and higher education probably wasn't going to be the easiest way to further a conversation with the pale, emaciated sociopath that currently occupied his bed.

"No. _I don't sleep_," Johnny emphasized, his voice filtering through his ruined throat and coming out tense and harsh.

"I don't have time for that."

"Well, what do you have time for?" Edgar asked, for a moment genuinely perplexed, and Johnny just stared at him.

Of course, the answer to that one was obvious.

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AN: the EdgarThoughts are getting very amusing to me.


	5. Chapter V: Edgar is a Crustacean

V.  
>_<p>

Edgar was not feeling well at all. As Johnny meticulously licked/chewed the syrup from his fingers, Edgar was again wondering what in the world he was doing. He had missed work without even calling in with some half-assed excuse, and now he had to spend the day in the same house as the man who not only had tried to kill him, but had successfully killed—Edgar could only assume—a mind-blowing number of people.

He was really letting his hormones get the best of him on this one.

Either that or the allure of the previously unstoppable Johnny C. being reduced to a Halloween mummy of white gauze and medical tape had overpowered him… But Edgar knew that, as easy as it would be to blame the current circumstances for how he felt, he couldn't simplify things like that. This was too important to him, even if it was entirely absurd. He didn't want to chalk it up as the product of some creepy caretaking fetish.

Maybe he just _liked_ him, which was probably even weirder.

And besides, Johnny certainly didn't seem powerless. Even though his voice was pretty much shot and his movements were somewhat impeded by the damage he'd sustained, (and if not because of that, at least because of the bulky, clumsily fashioned bandages which currently kept him in one piece) he'd held onto his customarily intense expression. "_Fuck, he even ate his breakfast intensely_," Edgar thought, part unnerved, part bemused.

"_He killed that toast and now he's going to kill me..."_

Edgar giggled a little hysterically. It wouldn't be that funny if he was in a rational mood, which he clearly was not. It was a lame joke, really. "I'm_ a lame joke. What is wrong with me?_" Edgar thought, prolonging the giggling with his melodrama.

Johnny stared.

Edgar stopped giggling and went back to feeling nauseous and weirdly self-conscious (and may have taken a few steps away from Johnny out of self-preservation).

It was awkward. It was probably going to keep being awkward. Ugh.

"_Please don't say something stupid, mouth. We've been together for a long time. I try to take care of you. All you have to do is string some words together for me right now, okay?_"

"I... guess I'll go make myself something to eat, then. I, um, hope you feel better."

"...Uh-huh..."

_

"_Feel better? Really? I don't think he's ever going to 'feel better,' he's like, bipolar or schizophrenic or sociopathic or all three or something! Was that insensitive? Am I being insensitive? Should I be sensitive? Jesus..._" Edgar internally lamented as he swiftly pivoted toward the door, scuttling away like some kind of startled crustacean. "_I don't even think. I _am_ a crustacean. All I do is scamper around and pick through the sand and... okay. Metaphor's getting too involved. Time to stop_."

Actually, Edgar had thought a lot about Johnny's mental state since he'd first met him. It was one of the reasons the job at the asylum had caught his eye, even though it was for the most part clerical work. He really wanted to understand what things were like for Johnny, how it would feel to not be able to trust yourself, to not be able to relate to anyone. He'd decided that he probably had a very extreme case of bipolar disorder, likely coupled with a few delusions and one or two personality disorders thrown in—definitely Borderline and probably Schizotypal ... and maybe some ADHD.

In short, Edgar really needed to get a life and stop figuring out what was wrong with everyone.

With whatever it was that was wrong with Johnny, he should probably be hooked up to an IV filled with a cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressants. Or he should at least give other people a chance once in a while, maybe find a person or two that he actually liked so he'd spend a little less time killing people. The local murder rate was definitely due for a reduction.

Maybe Edgar could do something about it.

"_Yeah, right._"

He poured himself some cereal and decided it'd be better if he took things one step at a time. Kept his goals small. Like staying sane and maintaining an unrequited crush on an incapacitated lunatic. And not trying to "change him" like some giddy, terribly unrealistic teenage girl.

This was going to be tough.


	6. Chapter VI: Doing Things Wrong

VI

_

Though they had slept nearly all day, Edgar took the encroaching nighttime as a good excuse to head back to his room for some more sleep; stress really tired him out.

Besides, he didn't want to deal with Johnny right now, even if spending time with him could prove therapeutic. Edgar decided to wish Johnny a quick, awkward goodnight and be done with it.

He approached the door, took a deep breath, and went inside. Johnny was sitting in bed reading one of Edgar's books—a collection of Franz Kafka's short stories.

"Isn't the one about the guy who starves himself hilarious?"

("_Oh god..._")

"In a way, I guess. It's not just a funny story though."

"How?"

"Well, when people die, it's not really just funny, even if part of you thinks it is. It's like... it tells you something. In the story I mean. Nobody understands that the man isn't just starving himself for other people's entertainment."

"Oh. Okay." Johnny paused for a second, seeming like he understood, but not quite. "_He probably just thinks that way about himself. Like he's the only one whose suffering isn't amusing."_ Edgar thought.

"You know I never wanted to see you again?" Johnny said out of nowhere.

Edgar could tell that this conversation wasn't going to end quickly. He needed to stop this wishful thinking business and gear up for whatever horrible and frustrating mess this was going to be.

"Oh? Why not?" he responded carefully, thinking that whatever direction this topic was heading, it probably wasn't a good one.

"Because. I didn't do it right."

"You mean you didn't kill me? Does that bother you?"

"All the time... I don't understand."

"_Great. He doesn't understand why he wouldn't kill someone. How healthy_."

"You know, it's okay to do things you don't normally do. Like I skipped work today to help you, and I'm probably not going tomorrow. Maybe I won't go back at all," Edgar mused aloud; he had enough money saved up to last him a ridiculously long time, and he really didn't like his job very much, anyways. This way, he could spend 24 hours with a crazy person instead of a few accidental minutes a week. It sounded interesting.

"You know," Edgar said impulsively, "you can stay here for as long as you want. I mean, it's not like I have anything else to do."

"No. Leaving. As soon as possible." Johnny asserted. He looked uncomfortable.

"Alright. I wasn't saying I wanted that or something, just that it was okay." Edgar replied, feeling unbearably self-conscious. He turned toward the door, needing to get out of there.

"I just don't know what I'll do." Johnny continued, as if Edgar was still listening attentively. "This wasn't supposed to happen. And the wall..."

"Wait. Where are you going? I told you I'm not going to sleep."

Edgar was already out the door.

He felt funny for being disappointed. Of course Johnny didn't want him to be alive. Sparing him was most likely just one of those strange impulsive things Johnny did on occasion, and now he was regretting it. Besides, Edgar didn't feel up to being murdered in his sleep by a crazed insomniac. He needed to take a walk or something.


	7. Chapter VII: Down the Rabbit Hole

VII.

Almost unconsciously, Edgar had gone out the door, down several streets, and after a lengthy walk, eventually ended up in front of Johnny's house, or what used to be Johnny's house.

The entire structure had been nearly decimated, as if an unrealistically localized earthquake had been hell bent on taking it out. The ground rose and fell haphazardly around the property, revealing cross-sections of curious rooms which had previously been hidden underground. The dead grass bubbled up at random, and it appeared that the majority of the house had been swallowed by the earth, although where exactly it had gone was hard to say.

It seemed as if no one had noticed the bizarre... redecoration of the building, and Edgar had a strange idea that he was the only person who could see it at all.

Another thing that ought to have made the yard particularly noticeable was that the ground was studded with missing persons. It was like the back of every milk carton, the age-progressed photos on every WalMart bulletin board had been thrown from the sky and embedded in Johnny's isolated world of misshapen stairwells and endless crawlspaces.

Except that thankfully, most were skeletons.

Despite his apprehension, Edgar felt compelled to pick through the mess—he wanted to understand something about all of this, even if the only thing it accomplished was to make him sick.

Carefully stepping around the fissures and jagged stalagmites of earth and sundry building materials, ("_and femurs_..." Edgar shuddered,) he slowly made his way through the wreckage until he noticed a hole in the ground that was larger than most. The hole, absurdly enough, had a bit of light emitting from it.

Edgar wasn't usually one for spelunking in hazardous suburban areas, but the possibility of discovering something about his current roommate was too tempting. Before he could allow himself to develop any outrageous (yet likely plausible) assumptions about what could be lurking in the subterranean room, he dropped down and promptly hit his head.

Edgar sat up and placed a tentative hand on the back of his skull, where a tumescent lump had already begun to form. Shrugging off the pain, Edgar surveyed the room.

A bare lightbulb, somehow still lit, hung by a cord from the ceiling, illuminating the room and revealing a vanity with a broken mirror. Its shards threw the light across all surfaces, making the room look like some sort of temple. On either side of the vanity, standing like bookends, were two statues or cookie jars that resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Except that they were pretty disgusting.

Really disgusting.

At first they seemed to be bizarrely modified versions of an actual product, like someone had taken a sharpie to the chubby little cookie men.

("_Is the Pillsbury Doughboy's hat a part of his body?_" Edgar wondered, "_It's the same color as the rest of him._")

These statues, however, seemed to be leering, little looks of condescension painted across their porcelain faces, and it might have been the head trauma, but Edgar could have sworn that one of them bared its teeth for a brief moment, sharp white canines splitting from the exaggerated frown.

Edgar wiped the dust from his glasses and looked again.

No visible teeth, but there was definitely a shift in the eyes. Swirled, hypnotic irises pointed toward him, and although the other figure's eyes were a stark white, he felt as if they were seeking him out.

"He doesn't like you, you know."

Edgar scuttled backward, alarmed by the voice and still in a sitting position as a result of his fall. ("_you hit your head you hit your head you hit your head_... _they're not alive_")

"He likes us. We tell him things he didn't know he knew," the Doughboys continued.

"We tell him about himself."

"We tell him... about the wall."

After his moment of cowering, Edgar was very angry. This shit was ridiculous. He wasn't in eighth grade anymore. He was not going to listen to a couple of Hot Topic curios.

"You know what? I am fucking tired of hearing about this wall. Now if you don't show me where this thing is, I'll cram cookies down your fucking throats until you both sneeze chocolate chips."

One of the Doughboys arched an eyebrow. "Ooh, a live wire. Someone get this guy a knife and we'll have ourselves a new butcher boy."

"I don't care what you say to me. You're leaving Johnny alone. He doesn't live here anymore."

"Nice job, Galahad. You're making me blush."

"Making _us_ blush," corrected the other.

"You know what he does when he's all alone in this house? He talks to us. He loves us. And he tells us about you and how you were so repulsive that he couldn't even kill you, Edgar Vargas."

"Why do you... you know my name because you're in my head."

"That's true... partially. We're alive because you're here. When no one's around we're in a sort of stasis. Very boring. But now that you've brought all of your ridiculous worries and frustrations and whatnot around, life is a lot more interesting. Who knows, we might even start to walk before you leave. You seem like you're wonderfully easy to upset."

"But really we just want Johnny back. After you patch him up he'll come around. He'll probably even like what this place looks like now. Better metaphorical representation of his mind or something like that. More secrets."

Edgar, though he wouldn't like to admit it, felt himself starting to believe in this sentient cookie jar shit. They knew too much, and they were even better than he was at getting to the core of his anxieties. He forced himself to get a grip and stopped thinking about Johnny, stopped thinking about anything other than the wall.

"It's over there. Spoilsport." the Doughboy with the whirling eyes pouted, shifting itself slightly and allowing the mirror's reflected light to reveal a door which had previously been in shadow.

"Thanks. It's been... interesting." Edgar said, feeling brave and wishing to throw a one-liner out there before he went through the doorway.

"That didn't sound smart or funny or original" a voice called after him.

"_Fucking mindreaders._"


	8. Chapter VIII: Secret Places

VIII.

Johnny's house was full of a lot of weird shit.

Edgar tried to keep from looking too closely; he wasn't sure whether it was out of courtesy or to preserve his stomach from the inevitable nausea that looking at Johnny's macabre possessions would produce. What he did see was disturbing enough—eviscerated dolls, a rabbit's head nailed to the wall which he swore gave him a nod of something like approval, countless sharp objects and elaborate machines... and it went on and on, like a museum of half-finished projects.

One thing Edgar learned from observing Johnny's house was that the other man probably had the worst attention span on earth. He supposed that Johnny must have, at some point, been some type of painter, since there were canvases everywhere, though they were only marked with a few brush strokes. He guessed that they could be an attempt at minimalism, though his initial assumption seemed more correct, as there were also vague and half-written notes ("don't forget that in the third basement there's...," "sharpen... something.") peppering the rooms.

Finally, Edgar found what must have been the infamous wall.

But it definitely wasn't a wall anymore.

Instead, there was a massive hole bordered by soggy strips of what could have been blood-soaked plaster or just plain congealed blood which peeled back from the remaining wall like petals. The floor and ceiling were partially demolished as well, though with the amount of blood that had been keeping the area perpetually damp, nothing was particularly stable. It wouldn't have been difficult to tear down, Edgar thought, and it could have even collapsed on its own. The remnants of an obscene amount of people's lives lay in red, pulpy heaps around the new doorway.

Edgar internally made a bad joke about the building material.  
>"<em>Heartwood... ha ha ha..."<em>

Some of this blood was his, though. It was strange to think that he was most likely the only donor that was still alive.

Feeling like he was the insane one for going through all of this trouble just to satisfy his own curiosity, Edgar turned on as many lights as he could find in the room, slightly illuminating the hole and whatever was beyond the hole, and stepped through.

When his eyes had adjusted to his dim surroundings, (and when he finally built up the courage to open them,) Edgar was completely taken aback. Behind the wall, there had been an entire room. A normal looking room. One that could belong in any of Edgar's friends' apartments, if Edgar had friends. This was possibly the most unsettling aspect of Johnny's house; the rest of the place had completely rearranged his idea of what to expect, lending a sense of uncanniness to the ordinary room.

After standing still and awaiting whatever would come along to disrupt the strangely serene atmosphere for a few minutes, Edgar concluded that he might not be in any danger, so he began to inspect the room more closely. There was a small twin bed, a bookshelf, a dresser, and a closet which was surprisingly lacking in literal skeletons. Scanning the bookshelf, Edgar was startled when he came across his name.

"_Edgar Allan Poe, idiot. Since when am I this easily startled?_" he thought, before correcting his statement with "_since forever_."

The rest of the books were mostly classics—Kafka, Hemingway, etc.—though there were a large number of colorful books detailing the works of various famous and obscure artists. Come to think of it, Edgar had noticed that the hidden bedroom's walls were almost completely covered with canvases. Then Johnny had been an artist, after all—his name was scribbled at the base of each painting and sketch.

Aside from all of the typical black, white, and grey clothes, and the enormous layer of dust over everything, the room seemed almost cheerful, though it had clearly been purposely shut off from the rest of the house—a window was bricked up and, of course, the wall had been built. Obviously Johnny had been attempting to ignore his past, but what had broken the wall down? It seemed as if it had collapsed from the inside, since there was little debris in the room. Maybe there had been something living here, a sort of ghost or strange, ethereal creature. Maybe it was something helpful, exposing the room to Johnny to remind him of his past. Or maybe it was something horrible that really did need to be kept in with blood.

Maybe Johnny had a kind of psychosis that could manifest.

Anyways, it seemed to be gone, and Edgar had an idea that if it was malignant, it was probably off bothering someone else, though this idea wasn't very helpful or particularly comforting.


End file.
